


this moment is a mountain to move

by heartunsettledsoul



Series: Forgotten Moments [21]
Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Canon Divergence, but super dirty, in which everything is super angsty, post 3x08, post ep
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-22
Updated: 2019-01-22
Packaged: 2019-10-14 13:26:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17509457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartunsettledsoul/pseuds/heartunsettledsoul
Summary: He knows it would be fruitless to argue with Betty that no, actually, it’s not okay at all that she was imprisoned in a Catholic mental institution while he was running around the greater New York state and Ohio area playing conspiracy theorist, Riverdale is quarantined, and he’s half a mile away, unable to go see her. Arguing with Betty is sometimes the equivalent of arguing with a wall; it’s one of her most admirable and attractive qualities, but Jughead wishes her stubbornness didn’t always extend to her dislike for acknowledging trauma.“Betts,” he sighs. “Even if you are fine, I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you and that I’m not there with you now. I’m just so glad you’re safe.”“I’m glad you’re safe too. I love you.” No matter how many times they say that to each other, Jughead is continually floored by the reverence in Betty’s voice when she whispers it in his ear—or yells it over the roar of his bike engine, laughs it before throwing a cold french fry at him, moans it while his mouth is on her skin and his body is heavy against hers.“I love you, too,” he sighs. “I wish I could see you.”or, some emotional turmoil between 3x08 and 3x09 ft. a couple of very horny teenagers





	this moment is a mountain to move

_I see this world is unraveling_  
_I wonder, who could we be_  
_Oh, I don't want to see us lose_  
_Any more time  
This moment is a mountain to move_

 _-_ Mountain to Move, Nick Mulvey 

 

* * *

 

 

When he finds out everything that happened in Riverdale during the couple of weeks he and Archie spent traipsing around ghost towns, hiding from a grown man afraid of two teenagers, and confronting abandonment issues face to face, Jughead is furious.

“Your mother sent you _where,_ ” he hisses into a phone. He’s bought a knockoff brand pay-as-you-go phone from a convenience store in Centerville, next door to the motel where he and FP are camped out. A shitty, twenty-dollar phone he’d used to call the Cooper landline, after his attempt to dial Betty’s cell number yielded a stomach-turning _this number has been disconnected_ autotone.

(During those horrifying ninety seconds between that message, wracking his brain for her home number, and Betty picking up the phone, Jughead realizes he hasn’t tried to call her in days. Things were moving at an absurd pace and he’d assumed she was mad at him and using the cold shoulder to tell him so.

Holy shit, had he been wrong.)

“It’s all okay now, Juggie. I’m fine.” Betty is talking to him with the patience of someone explaining things to a toddler and he loves her for the fact that she was the one _committed against her will_ and she’s trying to talk _him_ down about it.

As soon as he gets back into their godforsaken hometown, his first course of action is to kick down the Coopers’ front door, wrap Betty in his arms, and then tell Alice Cooper exactly where she can shove her parenting techniques.

He knows it would be fruitless to argue with Betty that no, actually, it’s not okay at all that she was imprisoned in a Catholic mental institution while he was running around the greater New York state and Ohio area playing conspiracy theorist, Riverdale is quarantined, and he’s half a mile away, unable to go see her. Arguing with Betty is sometimes the equivalent of arguing with a wall; it’s one of her most admirable and attractive qualities, but Jughead wishes her stubbornness didn’t always extend to her dislike for acknowledging trauma.

“Betts,” he sighs. “Even if you arefine, I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you and that I’m not there with you now. I’m just so glad you’re safe.”

“I’m glad you’re safe too. I love you.” No matter how many times they say that to each other, Jughead is continually floored by the reverence in Betty’s voice when she whispers it in his ear—or yells it over the roar of his bike engine, laughs it before throwing a cold french fry at him, moans it while his mouth is on her skin and his body is heavy against hers.

“I love you, too,” he sighs. “I wish I could see you.”

“Yeah,” Betty says, voice turning to confusion. “Where _are_ you, Jug? What the hell is going on?”

He tells her, or tries to anyway. Jughead hasn’t grasped much of what’s happening beyond this bullshit quarantine and, even so, his head is still swimming with Archie’s predicament, the residual shock of seeing his mother, and a burning hatred for Hiram Lodge.

(And Alice Cooper. Obviously. She can die in hole for what she’s done to Betty, cult-influenced turned-over leaf or not. Jughead has half a mind to bust through the police barricade to go fight her with his bare hands.)

They talk for hours, going over as many details as are available—which admittedly are few and far between. Betty seems to brush over many of the Sisters of Quiet Mercy specifics, other than that G&G apparently started as a scare tactic and that there’s now a dozen or so young women put up in Thistle House with Cheryl, and her cavalier manner worries him immensely. He doesn’t want to press her too much, lest she unravel or snap back, so he doesn’t. Jughead is not done with the conversation topic, but he distracts her as best he can.

She almost doesn’t have words for how awful Archie’s situation is, but she laughs about Jellybean’s crush and slingshot skills. Jughead finds himself choked up talking about his sister. “She’s so big now, with an even bigger personality. And I’ve—I dunno, Betty, I’ve missed so much of it and I miss her like crazy already.”

“Maybe you should have stayed, Juggie,” she whispers. It hurts to hear, but Jughead knows it’s not meant to imply he shouldn’t be home with her; she’s being classic Betty, trying to put others’ needs above her own. “We’d all be okay, we’d make it work. It’s not fair to be so far from your family.”

“ _You’re_ my family, Betts.”

At that, she starts to cry.

“It’s okay, baby, I’ll get to you as soon as I can,” Jughead swears.

They stay on the line together until Jughead hears her steady, even breathing and lulls himself to sleep with it, wishing they were wrapped up in each other instead.

- 

First thing in the morning, Jughead downs two cups of shitty convenience store coffee, and calls her again.

His dreams were full of horrifying images of Betty locked up by the nuns, bleeding and huddled in fear, and he woke up in physical pain he was so upset for her. It’s not unusual for his dreams to be about nothing but her, but they’re of the more pleasant variety; nearly every night since leaving town, he’d wake up hard and panting from dreams of Betty moaning underneath him, on top of him, on all fours in front of him. He misses her so fiercely it hurts, and that pain has only intensified since learning what she went through while he was off trying to play _Shawshank._

They’re only able to talk for a few minutes, Betty under Alice’s eagle-eyed watch in the kitchen and FP revving his bike’s engine in a signal to hurry up.

“I love you,” he says fiercely into the crackling reception. “We’re trying to get in touch with the rest of the Serpents and find a way back into town.”

“Stay safe, Juggie.”

He knows it’s a plea more than an order, but Jughead feels bad knowing he absolutely won’t be following her direction. Safe is a relative term anyway, he reasons with himself. As long as he’s in one piece when he sees her next, that will be good enough.

Hopefully.

* * *

The first night Betty is home from the Sisters, she sleeps terribly. The kids she and Ethel sprung free with them were mostly taken in from the foster system and thus without parents—and those _with_ families were from well beyond the Riverdale-Greendale area, the quarantine making reunions impossible. Alice and Mrs. Muggs were less than thrilled (and good riddance at that, Betty thinks derisively) but at the urgings and tempers of their daughters, agreed to house the kids overnight until Betty can get a hold of Cheryl and utilize Thistle House.

Even without the handful of younger girls, all about thirteen, who clung to Betty like the terrified children they actually _are,_ she wouldn’t have slept a wink with the rest of them waking up with withdrawal symptoms and night terrors of the mythical Gargoyle King coming for them.

(She immediately regrets the Gryphon Queen tactic when a girl named Annabelle wakes her up every twenty minutes whimpering that she needs the queen to save her.)

The next night, she barely sleeps at all. Cheryl and Toni came by to help shepherd the kids to Cheryl’s now-full mansion, where they’ll share space with displaced Serpents until social workers and parents can be tracked down. As for the displaced Serpents, Betty knows they have much longer to go without stability, and it weighs heavy on her shoulders.

None of them should have to deal with any of what the town is sending their way, but the hits just keep on coming.

Even without a dozen house guests, Betty can’t sleep for her worry about Jughead and Archie. Veronica and Reggie come over, then eventually Fred, and it’s a dejected group sitting around coffee that’s gone cold while Alice tries to hostess her way out of an awkward situation. Still angry beyond belief with her, Betty eventually snaps, “God, Mom, just go upstairs, nobody wants muffins.”

Reggie mumbles that _he_ wants a muffin, but Veronica elbows him in the ribs and he falls silent while Fred continues to fill them all in on the trip out to Toledo and Archie’s new, vague whereabouts. Betty catches sight of Reggie’s hand resting on Veronica knee, seemingly in comfort, but it’s not her place to say anything and, besides, she’s too goddamn tired to even ask her friend about it.

Mr. Andrews looks equally exhausted and, when Reggie and Veronica leave for _Le Bonne Nuit_ , Betty makes a fresh pot of coffee. He looks at her carefully when she pours him a mug and offers cream. “You okay, kiddo? I know these past few weeks can’t have been easy without Jughead around.”

She carefully picks at her thumbnail before answering, torn between wanting to break down crying and ask to stay with him, flashing her Cooper Smile to say she’ll be okay, and asking whether Jughead said anything about her, knows what’s happened, plans to come back to Riverdale now that he’s with his family. But, based on his question, not even Fred knows about what her mother did, so there’s barely a chance Jughead would know.

“I’m tired,” she eventually answers.

“Me too, Betty. Me too.”

-

They keep a silent vigil the whole night, taking turns for who brews a fresh pot. Betty isn’t quite sure what either of them is waiting for, but the company is nice. She must doze off somewhere around three in the morning, and wakes up with a blanket resting over her shoulders to Alice sitting across from the kitchen table flipping through a magazine.

“I sent Fred home,” Alice says in a noncommittal tone.

Betty yawns. “I can see that, Mom. Thanks for the update.”

“Would you like breakfast?”

Unfortunately, yes, Betty does want breakfast. She’s had nothing but soggy cereal—the only food at the Sisters’ she could see poured from the container herself—for weeks and she could really go for her mother’s pancakes.

“Yes, please,” she grumbles.

“Sit up straight, Elizabeth, you’ll ruin your posture.”

Out of nothing but pure instinct and habit, Betty sits ramrod straight. The movement does provide relief in that her upper back pops and undoes a crick in her neck, but she resents herself listening to Alice. Nothing good has ever come from listening to her mother.

She’s handed a plate of two pancakes and half a grapefruit. And the cream is pointedly removed from the table, replaced with fat-free milk.

With a sigh, Betty digs into the pancakes. At least she’s not being force-fed untested, illicit drugs anymore.

-

Sleep comes in stretches of thirty minutes until Betty finally hears from Jughead. When the house phone rings, she looks warily at the caller ID. For everything that’s happened over the last year, Betty knows better than to pick up a phone call from an unknown number, but something in her propels her forward to lift it from its cradle and press the green button.

She says hello in a shaky voice that instantly steadies at the sound of Jughead’s voice on the other end of the line.

“ _Betty?_ Oh thank god, I was so worried.”

The relief she feels is so overwhelming she could faint.

“Juggie,” she sighs, shoulders relaxing down from where they’ve crept up to her ears.

She falls asleep to the sound of his voice and dreams that everything is alright; dreams that there’s no quarantine and he comes home to her, to take her away to some place for just the two of them, to kiss the tension out of her body, to make her forget the chaos of Riverdale.

It hurts to wake up, but it hurts less than it has all the days before.

-

Her mother’s hovering, however discreet she is attempting to be and however useless it is after Betty _breaks out of an asylum and is stuck in her quarantined hometown,_  grates on her nerves exceptionally fast. Alice rushes her off the phone with Jughead and it breaks Betty more than she’d like it to; she’s survived plenty on her own through her entire life and, arguably, just went through more than all of that combined in the past month. But in the absence of an adequate familial support system, Betty leans on her boyfriend instead.

And she misses her boyfriend.

Betty is big enough (and just plain _sad_ enough) to admit it.

So she waits for Alice to leave on some unknown errand and then Betty picks the lock on her mother’s vanity, retrieves her unused cell phone, and spends an absurd amount of time on the phone with the wireless company pretending to be Alice Marie Smith Cooper to get it turned back on. Once the line is turned back on, Betty logs into the online account, guessing the password on her second try, moves the phone line onto a secondary account in Polly’s name—unfortunately the only legal adult whose identification she has access to, despite the glaring lack of trust in her sister at the moment—that bills to her own bank account.

(Her dwindling babysitting funds need to be replenished, but Betty hasn’t had time to breathe let alone watch the Anderson kids. In this instance only, she takes up Veronica’s open offer to lend her money.

“You’re a lifesaver, Veronica,” Betty sighs into her phone that afternoon, making her first celebratory call.

“It’s the least I can do for not paying enough attention to realize you were in trouble. Please forgive me, B.”

The voice in Betty’s head, the one urging her to pick up the phone when Jughead called, wants to say no. _No, I won’t forgive you, you all forgot about me and I needed your help._ But she’s tired and she misses her best friend as much as she does her boyfriend.

“You had other things going on, I understand.”)

With that obstacle cleared, Betty feels armed to return to the bizarre outside world—at the very least to go visit all the Quiet Mercy kids at Cheryl’s and keep them company, while keeping Cheryl sane in the face of all her house guests.

But first, she calls Jug again.

“Your phone’s back on?” he answers by way of greeting.

“It took a little subterfuge, but yes,” Betty grins. “Unfortunately she wiped it before turning off the line, so I lost all my photos from the summer and from the speakeasy opening, which I’m probably more upset about than I should be.”

“You’re just mad you lost photographic evidence that I’ve worn a suit more than twice.” It’s good to hear his teasing tone, but Betty really is sad about losing the photos. They have so few tangible, carefree things in their lives, and photos of those few and far between happy moments are something Betty’s always cherished.

She regrets not making herself take the one hour she needed to go to the pharmacy and print physical copies of photos that weren't justfor investigative purposes.

There will be more moments, sure, more photos of the years to come. The loss makes her feel hollow, though. “I’m sorry, baby,” Jughead says after her relative silence. “We had some good ones from the speakeasy, but we’ll take more. I promise.”

Betty sighs. “I know. Just come home soon so we can do that, okay?”

“As fast as I can, Betty.”

* * *

It goes on like this for days: mornings started with shitty coffee and a few minutes on the phone with Betty, he and FP riding their bikes along the town lines to look for breaks in the security, long stretches of nothing, phone calls and cryptic texting with Serpents still in town, even shittier gas station pizza washed down by generic soda (or not-so-generic beer, for FP), and falling asleep talking with Betty.

Nobody can accuse Jughead of lacking routine anymore, he supposes.

But he’s growing impatient; impatient of the watered down coffee and candy bars for breakfast, of FP choosing to sit in the motel room and drink when they can’t do anything else, of stiff mattresses that Jughead wishes smelled like Betty’s fabric softener, of not being able to _hold_ Betty, kiss her, touch her, hear her moan in pleasure instead of exhaustion.

He’s sick of tacking on an _I miss you_ , to every _I love you._

Jughead’s only solace is that he’s gotten Veronica (via Cheryl, via Toni and Fangs) to keep Betty occupied outside of her house. He isn’t trying to micromanage or be overbearing, but he’s worried that Betty might sequester herself in her room to avoid Alice instead of exercising her limited freedom by getting the hell out of there.

Fangs tells him (via Toni, via Cheryl and Veronica) that Betty is still looking “hauntingly thin” but is improving and, to quote Cheryl, the circles under her eyes “now only require four-star concealer instead of five-star.” None of that serves to make him feel any better, but in absence of him being able to see Betty for himself, it’ll have to do. Fangs also delivers the news that some of the town border security is lessening; there are cracks along Sweetwater River now, so he hopes it’s only a matter of time until something driveable clears.

“Keep me posted, Fangs. I really appreciate you doing the extra checks at night for me,” Jughead says, buoyed by the mediocre news.

“You got it, boss.”

The line goes dead before Jughead can do anything to aid the funny taste in his mouth at _boss._ That is his role, he supposes, but being addressed as a superior by someone in his own grade, who is technically eight months older and several years more experienced in gang life doesn’t sit right.

In the grand scheme of things, though, Jughead serves as a better leader than his father could in his current state of half in the bag off gas station forties.

Despite the chill in the air, Jughead stays out on the motel staircase until enough time has passed for FP to fall asleep. He sends a goodnight text to Betty, who has hopefully been asleep for hours by now, and creeps back into the room to shut off the tv and fall asleep on top of the covers.

-

During one of their early morning phones, Betty gasps so loudly Jughead chokes on his water—he’s all but given up on the coffee and is too cheap to buy a fancy, bottled version.

“What, what’s wrong?” he wheezes through his drowning windpipe.

Betty sounds so heartbroken, it’s comical given her next statement. “Juggie, it’s the middle of October already! I was stuck at the Sisters' for your birthday.”

Jughead checks the _No One Born After This Date Can Purchase Alcohol_ sign above the cash register and sees that it is, in fact, over two weeks past his birthday. He hums noncommittally; despite the strength of their relationship as it stands and all the conversations, actions, steps forward that have transpired in the past twelve months, his birthday last year is still a touchy subject.

“I had something special planned too,” she laments.

 _That_ has him snapping to attention, feigned disinterest long forgotten. “Betty.” His response is sharp, too sharp, and the moment it leaves his mouth he wants to take it back. Jughead can picture the exact expression on her face, a faint pout but with a tremor in her eyes that means she thinks she deserves whatever has been thrown at her.

And she doesn’t, not ever.

“It was just for the two of us,” she mumbles.

He runs a hand through his hair, tugging sharply to keep himself awake. It only succeeds in stirring his groin, rather than his brain, since the last fingers yanking on his unruly hair were hers, weeks ago, as she rode him with abandon in the bunker.

“Fuck.” He swears mostly under his breath, berating himself both for upsetting Betty unnecessarily and for thinking with his dick when he should be focusing on Betty over the phone, not the Betty in his memory whose yelps reverberated through the empty, metal tunnels with every thrust.

Fuck indeed.

“I’m sorry, Betts. I’m not awake yet and I shouldn’t be taking it out on you. I know whatever you had planned would have been wonderful. We’ll do it when I’m home, okay?”

Her halfhearted agreement makes him feel like even more of a jackass and even though their conversation ends positively—as positively as it can, given the circumstances—Jughead knows her feelings are hurt. Texting another _I love you_ for good measure, he storms out of the convenience store and leans against his bike to drink more water and will his mind out of the gutter.

Then again, he thinks. Maybe the gutters, or more specifically the underground tunnels, are where his mind should be.

-

After he gets off the phone with Fangs, who’s now on the hunt for a map of the tunnels with Sweet Pea, Jughead calls Betty back. The potential for his way back into town calms the tension between them enough for Jughead to cheekily tell Betty what made him think of the tunnels in the first place.

He has a difficult time picking his jaw up from the ground when he hears Betty pause for a moment, shuffle around, and then whisper, “My door's locked and I'm in bed. Tell me what else you remember from that day.”

Though a town-wide quarantine after helping his best friend run for his life and after his girlfriend’s forced institutionalization isn’t exactly the best context for fumbling his way through phone sex for the first time, Jughead makes do. He talks Betty through it in a low tone, perched on his bike to keep pressure on himself until he can get into the shared bathroom and jack off to the memory of Betty’s pretty moans, her breathy “I wish you were here to fuck me, Juggie,” and the muffled thump of the phone dropping when she finishes.

(He practically leaps into the shower once FP emerges from the room and the water barely has time to warm up before he’s fisting himself and coming in his hand.)

-

Hours later, Fangs calls again.

“No luck, Jug. We spend half the day in those damn tunnels and as far as we can tell, there’s no exits outside of the border.”

This time when Jughead calls Betty, she cries on the other end of the line.

* * *

Eventually, Betty runs out of things to do. School is closed, and she’s already caught up on as many assignments as she can from the weeks she missed; the Sisters of Quiet Mercy is outside of town lines so there’s only so much Sierra McCoy can help her with until someone can leave Riverdale to serve papers; her mother is systematically emptying every closet and cupboard in the house and making donation piles based on some bunk method from a book she read at the Farm, and it’s all Betty can do to keep her out of her room; Veronica is sitting in her speakeasy and drinking nonstop with Josie and Reggie; she’s too wary of her relationship with the Serpents without Jug around to do anything but sit around Thistle House anxiously.

Even phone calls with Jughead are useless, they’ve exhausted every conversation topic and she can only fight tears and say iterations of _I love you_ and _I miss you_ so many times.

There’s nothing left.

Remarkably, this is what does her in.

Not being locked away at an asylum and not the recurrence of her night terrors, but this.

Boredom.

She sits on her bed, stares at the last few glow-in-the-dark stars on her ceiling, and begins to sob.

-

After that, each phone call with Jughead starts and ends with tears.

When she says a watery goodnight that evening, Betty hears the crack in Jughead’s own voice. “I’m trying, baby. I swear to god I’m gonna find a way back to you soon.”

* * *

There’s a loud buzzing in his right ear. It starts as static on the radio in his dream, he and Betty in their homecoming garb from sophomore year, dancing barefoot in Sunnyside trailer park. The buzzing grows louder and louder, Betty’s voice in his ear fading, until Jughead comes to with such exhausted fury he almost throws his piece of shit cell phone at the wall.

The caller ID shows Fangs’ number. He picks up.

“Jug, dude, I think there’s a window but you gotta move fast.”

He’s bolt upright in bed, senses on high alert. Even as Fangs starts talking, his beanie is on his head, feet are through his pantlegs.

“I have no idea if this is a fluke or what, but there’s no one on Crescent Road coming into town from Greendale. Think you can make it within the hour?”

“Who fucking knows, but I’m sure as hell gonna try. Stay hidden and I’ll call when I’m close.”

Adrenaline is coursing through him at such a high rate his teeth start to chatter. He’s throwing everything within reach into his bag and snatches his keys from the bedside table before flipping the light switch and shoving his dad’s sleeping form.

All he gets in response is a loud snore.

“For chrissake, Dad, come _on,”_ Jughead shouts.

Nothing.

It takes him approximately three seconds to decide the effort it would take to wake up a drunk FP Jones, Jr. is not worth missing this chance. He scribbles a note on the crumpled bag the beer came in and hightails it out of the motel parking lot. Circling all the way around to Greendale takes forever; it’s cold so his hands are numb and he’s anxious enough to vomit, but when he slips into neutral and walks the bike down the last half mile of the road to call Fangs, the coast is still clear.

Across the gap in the roadblock, headlights flash once, twice, three times.

Jughead pulls the Hail Mary out of the depths of his brain and thinks of Betty’s smile before kicking his bike back into gear and flying over the town line. He skids into place next to a line of bikes carrying Fangs, Sweet Pea, and a kid he thinks is named Spinner.

“Spin’s the one that noticed this one was clear on our rounds tonight,” Sweet Pea says, clapping the gangly kid on his shoulder so hard he jolts forward on his bike.

Jughead extends his hand out and grasps the younger Serpent’s in gratitude. “Great job, man.”

“Where’s FP?”

With a heavy sigh, Jughead answers the question the same way he has for most of his life. “Drunk and asleep.”

“What now, boss?” Spinner asks, face lit up by the moon and by Jughead’s praise.

“Now, you guys go back and get some sleep, you’ve earned it. I’ll come by in the morning, I’ve got a ladder to climb.”

* * *

Betty’s dreams are growing cruel, taunting her with loving reunions and rewound time and futures unmarred by trauma. They’ve become so real to her that the sound of her window sliding open is pitch perfect and the thud of Jughead’s boots on her bedroom floor sends the appropriate vibrations over to her bed.

She wants to cry at the outlined shadow of his crown points on her wall, bathed in moonlight that highlights a relieved smile on her love’s face.

Tears overcome her as the ghost of his embrace slips under the covers, warms her up, and they fall even harder at the whispered, “Go back to sleep, I’ve got you, baby.”

It’s all too real and too unfair.

She fades back into restless sleep to the feeling of her heartache and the memory of his breath on her neck.

-

When she wakes, it’s because Jughead is snoring. Their circumstances haven’t allowed for that many nights spent together but Betty knows he always snores when he’s flat on his back. Despite her grogginess, the muscle memory takes over and she shoves him hard until he rolls on his side.

Then it registers.

He’s here. She’s awake and he’s _here._

“Jug?” she whispers frantically. “Jug? _Juggie,_ wake up!”

Mumbling incoherently, Jughead writhes around and blinks up at her. “Whassgoinon?”

Betty could laugh, this feels so blissfully normal. A grumbling, half-awake Jughead in her bed, not realizing he’s woken her up with his snores. Wide awake now, she shakes him again, gleeful but not quite ready to believe what she’s seeing.

“Jughead, what the _hell?_ ”

Finally, he catches on. And then he’s sitting up so quickly, Betty nearly falls off the bed in surprise. “Shit,” he says sheepishly. “I was kind of hoping I’d be awake before you.”

Not even caring what’s happened or how he’s gotten there, Betty launches herself at him. He falls back onto the pillows with a soft _oof,_ wrapping his arms around her and squeezing tight. She’s held so close against his chest that it’s constricting her breath but to hell with proper lung function.

He’s back. Jughead came back to her.

And then her tears are soaking his shirt and he’s peppering kisses across her face and they’re both uttering _I love you_ ’s like a prayer.

* * *

Neither of them feel safe enough to let go, so they cling to each other and let sleep take them, swathed in the early morning light as it dances across Betty’s comforter.

* * *

They sleep the entire day away; the sheer exhaustion and relief coursing through their body is finally enough to let them get their much-needed, well-deserved rest.

Betty stirs awake sometime after 10pm, heart leaping into her throat when Jughead isn’t there and the crushing defeat of disappointment hits her like a ton of bricks. Her nails are in her palms even faster than the tears fill her eyes. She lifts one of her pillows, holds it to her mouth, and screams until her lungs are spent.

When she drops the pillow, faint red marks dot the back of the pillowcase.

She’s sobbing into her hands when the bedroom door cracks open and Jughead emerges from the hallway, carrying glasses of water, a bag of popcorn, one sleeve of cookies, and two boxes of cereal.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, Betty hang on,” he hisses upon realizing what’s happened, what she’s thought. He pulls her to him and strokes her hair as she hiccups into his chest. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you. I was just fucking starving and I had to wait until your mom went to bed. It’s okay, it’s okay.”

Slowly, her sobs subside and then she’s giggling hard enough for the tears to keep flowing. “Trust you to give me a heart attack because you got _hungry.”_

“Betts,” he says with a great amount of sincerity in his voice. “I slept through _three meals,_ it was a disgrace to my name.” He punctuates the point by reaching over to where he dropped his rations and ripping open a box of chocolate cereal puffs. There’s laughter in his eyes as he crunches and chocolate dust on hip lips when Betty leans in to kiss him.

It starts as a soft peck but quickly snowballs, each clinging desperately to each other again in the naive hope that they’ll never have to be separated again. Jughead’s hand comes to grip at her waist, pushing her into the mattress, and Betty sighs into his mouth at the feel of his tongue against her lips.

She’s not sure where the confidence comes from after weeks of being at her absolute lowest—probably the same depths of her brain that drove her to slip her hand down her panties and ask Jughead to tell her exactly what he’d to do her—but she trails her mouth across his jaw to nip at the lobe of his ear before whispering, “I can think of something else you could eat.”

He pulls back in surprise, a mischievous grin on his face. It slips a bit when he glances at his pile of snacks and he groans. “I—shit.” The sigh he heaves has all the weight of a man with an impossible choice before him and, quite frankly, Betty thinks it’s a no-brainer.

“Jug?” She calls his attention once more by pressing a kiss to the curve of his jaw and then sneaking her hand into the elastic of his boxers. A strangled groan falls from his lips when she uses a feather-light touch against him.

“Yeah?”

Betty makes his decision for him. “You and I can eat at the same time, you know.”

His next curse is uttered as a growl and then there’s a scramble to pull off shirts and underwear, then to fit limbs in correct places and Betty has never been more turned on in her life as she is when Jughead blows cool air against her center at the same time that she takes him heavy in her mouth.

It’s intoxicating to have him in her bed for the first time—to have a full mattress with real sheets and enough pillows to cushion beneath both heads and hips. It feels good to feel _safe_ in her blankets and yet feel high on experimenting with him, on his tongue flicking against her, on falling apart so fast she’s almost embarrassed. Betty has to pivot her hips away from him when he keeps going, too sensitive for more sensation, and then focuses on nothing but her lips on Jughead and his fingers in her messy hair.

“ _God,_ Betty.” His moans grow louder after she does something with her tongue she’s not sure she can replicate, but tries, and then he’s yanking her off him with a pop, panting heavily. “I want—” she ducks down to run her tongue along him once more, relishing in how undone he sounds at her actions “— _god, fuck—_ hang on, Betty, I want to be inside you, I need to look at you.” Jughead’s voice cracks a little toward the end and Betty can tell it’s more from emotion than it is from desire.

Tears prick at her eyes as she crawls back up to him, kissing him soundly and tasting both of them as their lips slot together. “I know,” she croons. “I know, I love you, I love you.” It’s a vow falling from her lips in whispers that repeat on and on until they turn to impassioned groans from both parties when Jughead pushes inside her and drops his head down to mouth at her breast.

The time spent away from each other, though excruciating, has not thrown them off their rhythm and it’s only a matter of time before Betty is running her fingers through Jughead’s hair lovingly as he tries to catch his breath. His lips tremble slightly when he feathers kisses down her neck, “I missed you so much.” Betty adjusts, nestling into the crook of his arm before sighing the same words into Jughead’s chest.

She’s drifting off to sleep when she thinks he hear him say softly, “I won’t let this town tear us apart again.”

* * *

This time they wake to an exasperated sigh. Jughead’s eyes fly open and he dives for the blankets that have fallen down to his and Betty’s bare waists. Beside him, Betty murmurs at the movement before squeaking in terror and burrowing under the covers.

“For goodness sake, you two,” snaps Alice.

Jughead is more terrified than when he stood his ground in front of the entire Ghoulie gang. He’d get up and run if he had any clothing on.

“Jughead, I know you know where the front door is, seeing as you literally kicked it in last year. Use that next time before you fall off that goddamn ladder and break your neck.”

He gapes like a fish out of water, trying to form any sort of words. Betty slowly peeks her head out to turn in her mother’s direction.

“Yes, good morning, Elizabeth. I hope you had the good sense to use protection since your birth control lapsed while you were with the Sisters. I’ll make sure that gets refilled immediately.”

Quietly, Jughead thanks any and every being that Betty _did_ keep a stash of condoms in her nightstand drawer because there was absolutely no power that would have stopped them from having sex the previous night. As though Mrs. Cooper had heard his thoughts, she narrows her eyes at him and then it occurs to Jughead that if anybody in this town were to have supernatural powers, it’d be his girlfriend’s mother.

“I need to run errands, there’s fresh coffee downstairs. I expect Jughead to either be presentable or not here when I return.”

She closes the door with an air of finality and Betty’s laughter soon has the entire bed shaking. “God, that’s not funny, Betty. One of these days your mom may actually kill me!” He bites back the joke about the eldest Cooper woman’s ability to hide bodies, sobering his mood as Jughead remembers all the consequent bodies and troubles since then.

Scrubbing a hand across his face, he sighs. “I should probably get back to the Serpents today. I told Fangs I’d be by… shit, yesterday at this point.”

Betty’s only response is to nuzzle in closer to him and he can tell she’s refraining from asking him not to go.

“I could use coffee and a shower before I leave, though,” he placates. “I’m not leaving right this second.”

His girlfriend raises her eyebrows at the mention of a shower, which is how Jughead finds himself with her soapy hands massaging a sore spot on his shoulder not ten minutes later. The action is so sweet, so domestic, that Jughead has a hard time accepting it as reality. These are the moments he lives for in the same way his breath still catches when Betty tells him she loves him; it’s the glimpses of the—hopefully normal—life they might live, where they can take leisurely showers together with pauses between shampoos to kiss languidly, can argue over whose side has more of the blankets while making the bed, can relax into each other on the couch with morning coffee.

Preferably a life where Jughead doesn’t have to cut morning coffee short to go manage a gang of homeless teenagers before meeting back up with Betty to investigate why her best friend’s dad seems hellbent on taking over the town.

“You really can come with me if you want,” he tells her, reluctant to part ways once more.

“It’s fine, Juggie. It’s about time I go talk to Ronnie about all this anyway. We’ll meet at Pop’s for lunch.”

Jughead draws her to him in a bone-crushing hug and then kisses her forehead. “I’ll see you soon, baby.”

* * *

Days go on again in a new, much more pleasant routine. Jughead mans Serpent base camp, Betty and Veronica plot the best way to manage the current state of affairs, Alice pretends she doesn’t hear her daughter bring her boyfriend upstairs every night, rinse and repeat.

The reality of their circumstances starts to weigh heavy again and between roadblocks both literal and metaphorical from Hiram Lodge, and increased neediness from the confused Quiet Mercy kids, Betty and Jughead’s time together quickly turns to exhaustion, complaints about exhaustion, and sleeping.

It’s not ideal, Jughead thinks, but at least he can fall asleep with Betty in his arms each night. That alone is a vast improvement on every night that’s come before.

On an evening after a day where nobody really knows what the next steps are, he’s aimlessly flipping through Betty’s copy of _Macbeth_ and adding notes to her own when he hears her throat clear from across the room.

When he looks up, the book drops from his hands.

In front of him is Betty, breathtaking as always, but especially so tonight in a black bra and panty set, one he hasn’t seen before that has intricate criss-crosses of lace at her hips and comes with a sheer, practically useless robe that hangs open and skims the top of her thighs.

It takes a few throat clearings of his own before Jughead can speak and, even then, his power over the English language is feeble. “What—damn, what brought this on?”

Betty chews on her bottom lip, her only tell that despite her boldness, she’s a little nervous.

(She shouldn’t be. Lingerie or not, Betty Cooper is the single most attractive woman in Jughead’s world. Whether it’s because of a bra that’s pushing her breasts together in a way that makes Jughead’s groin tighten or because of intelligent commentary on Lady Macbeth in her margin notes, he will never not find her sexy.)

“This was the special birthday plan.”

Bolstered by his speechlessness, Betty saunters closer to him until her legs bracket his where he’s sitting up on the edge of her bed. He lets his hands wander, tracing the gooseflesh across her belly up to the delicate bow at the center of her bra, all the while staring up at her in awe. Her skin is warm and soft under his touch and, though he knows the effect of this ensemble is his birthday gift, Jughead wants nothing more than to tear it off her.

“This—” he tugs her down so she’s straddling his hips and her chest is practically in his face—“is my—” the robe slides off her shoulders and falls in a puddle at his feet—“kind—” one hand toys with the string of lace at her hips, the other pulling at one cup of the bra until her nipple is exposed—“of birthday—” he takes the nipple between his teeth and Betty’s answering yelp spurs him forward.

They surge into each other, Jughead unable to decide where he wants his hands—it’s everywhere, her hair, her neck, squeezing her breasts, sinking into her heat—and Betty kissing him so deeply he thinks he might lose consciousness for lack of oxygen. Where their reunion had been frenzied, they take their time now. Betty rocks her hips slowly over his, Jughead fists his hands into her hair, and they stay upright and fused at the mouth for what feels like an eternity.

It’s nothing but soft touches and hard kisses, whispered reverences, high-pitched gasps, and the tantalizing slick of skin on skin. Betty rises and falls over him with grace, letting him swallow her sharp intakes of breath each time she sinks back down. He wants her to come first, he always does, so he sucks on her nipple and slides his thumb down to where they’re joined, moving it quickly until she’s babbling incoherent curse words into his hair. When it’s his turn, Betty places both his hands on the dips in her waist and tells him to take what he needs, and then he’s gripping her so tightly he’s afraid to leave finger-shaped bruises. But then he’s snapping his hips up into hers and it’s such a blinding flash of pleasure he can’t remember why he was ever worried.

When they fall back into the plush of her blankets, Betty slips from his grasp too soon for his liking. “No,” he whines, fumbling for her wrist.

“I’m just going to wash up,” she tells him in a soft voice. Jughead lets go, but only after tugging her in for one more kiss.

She returns after a few minutes, her hair pulled up into a sloppy knot and clutching her regular fluffy pink robe to her. “I was cold.” Her cheeks are pink and Jughead wishes he knew all the right words to tell her that he loves her no matter what color, what underwear, what mood she’s wearing.

“C’mere,” is all he manages, pulling her to him and sticking his hands into the pockets of her robe to warm them. “Let’s snuggle.”

* * *

Betty likes to tease Jughead for how much he likes to spoon, calling him _snuggie Juggie_ in a singsong voice only because she knows he loves her enough to get away with it.

“Don’t ruin my street cred as the prickly loner,” he’d once told her.

“Too late,” she had answered. “You became a marshmallow the moment you climbed into my window to kiss me.”

As they’re laying in her bed after Betty let him unwrap his belated birthday present, Jughead brings his nose close to her ear and nuzzles her. “You know,” he muses, pulling her in close and then shifting to tug her comforter further up their shoulders. “If we missed my birthday, that also means we missed another date. A less arbitrary, way more important holiday that I actually would want to celebrate.”

She wracks her brain, unsure of what he’s talking about.

“Jug,” she says. “You hate just about every holiday on the calendar, so what could we have possibly missed?”

He answers her so matter-of-factly that the weight of his statement almost doesn’t register. “Our anniversary.”

Betty nestles in closer to him, breathing deeply and fighting back a wave of emotions that threatens to break free. She loves him _so_ much there almost aren’t any words for it and it’s hard to remember, in the wake of all their chaos, that they’re just supposed to be two kids in love.

“Hell of a year,” Betty sighs.

Behind her, Jughead presses a kiss into her hair. “Not that we’re off to the best start, but maybe this next one won’t be as insane.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

 

 

_fin_

**Author's Note:**

> this was a doozy to write, but I hope you all enjoy. and pretty please comment if you do!
> 
> shoutout to the ever lovely jugandbettsdetectiveagency for the endless encouragement and beta skills ❤️


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